International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day!

May 1st is International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day! It's an event originated by guerrillagardening.org, encouraging people to spread a few sunflower seeds in their neighborhood, or on their route to work. Well, the Garden Posse is going beyond that. We're hosting an event to mobilize Austinites to cover the Central Austin area with sunflowers, seed bombs, and tomato transplants. Because why have a little guerrilla gardening when you can have a lot?  

 We'll meet up at the Lamar Street Pedestrian bridge at 9pm on May 1st, on our bikes or other planting-friendly transportation (scooters, good; walking shoes, good; cars, bad). 

Bring trowels, flashlights, water, and a couple packets of sunflower seeds. The Garden Posse also has wildflower seed bombs and tomato plants for planting. We'll converge and then disperse to plant our seeds around Central Austin, taking pictures to send into guerrillagardening.org, which is coordinating efforts around the globe. 

We'll meet up later at a downtown bar to regale ourselves with stories of our adventures. If you haven't experienced the cheap, green thrills of guerrilla gardening yet, tonight is the night to do it! The feeling of earthy satisfaction is far better than drinking your early evening away. 

RSVP to "International Guerrilla Gardening Day in Austin" on Facebook. 

Details of the night are still being finalized. Feel free to throw any suggestions the Garden Posse's way at gardenposse@gmail.com. 

And in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for areas that could use sunflowers! Suggestions include:

1. Undeveloped lots
2. Empty flower boxes
3. Areas that might be within the range of sprinkler systems and could use some brightness. 

The sunflowers we plant in May will bloom in August.

For more information, visit guerrillagardening.org and join the Garden Posse facebook group. 

Chestnut Garden for Spring!

Hello posse,

This Tuesday, we'll be meeting at 7:30 pm at the corner of 16th & Chestnut (on the East Side). We're going to be sprucing up the Chestnut neighborhood garden for spring! The garden has been thriving in the community, with neighbors volunteering to water the garden and placing new plants in the ground. It's in an empty lot, so there is lots of room to expand it.

Greg has plants, and he'll be heading up the mission. If you have any questions, email him at greggardenposse@gmail.com. Feel free to bring any seeds or plants you would like to donate, as well as tools and flashlights (always helpful).

Also, over the weekend we received a veritable bonanza of tomato plants from Gardens. There are three flats of different varieties sitting outside my apartment now. Do you have any ideas of what to do with a bonanza of tomatoes? Let us know.

Conquering the invasive cesspool - tonight!

Tonight, at 7:30pm, we'll be back at 1st and Annie, at the Cesar Chavez mural in South Austin. Last week we did quite a job on the "cesspool" of invasive plants at the base of the mural. We tore out the china berries and other bad trees with a weed wrench. It made us feel tough. But there is still much work to be done in terms of pulling out and cleaning up the scraggly grasses, which have probably left their seeds behind in the dirt.

We want to get the area as cleaned up as possible. Then we have sunflower seeds and an agave to plant, plus seed bombs. We also have the makings for a garden sign. And there is a plan to get the mulch in at the other mural.

We hope you'll join us - bring any tools you might have to pull up grass and do some planting. Flashlights are good, too!

New garden, near same location!

Tonight we'll be returning to the corner of S 1st & Annie at 7:30 pm, but we'll be moving across the street. Across from the "Greetings from Austin" mural is a lesser known mural featuring Cesar Chavez besmirched by some graffiti with little artistic value. There are also some nice looking sunflowers painted onto the wall. Right now, the ground beneath it is a mess of weeds and rapidly growing invasive chinaberries.

With a bit of the Garden Posse magic, the mural will become the backdrop to a beautiful garden. Plans tonight are to pull up the weeds and invasives, and figure out plans and plants for the garden. This shouldn't take more than an hour - please come out and join us tonight!

Photos from the "Greetings from Austin" mural

Our "Greetings from Austin" garden is nearly complete! All it requires is massive amounts of mulch, a sign, and a bit of continuing TLC. Here are the long-delayed photos from our two nights on the job.

It's the crew! "Greetings" from the Garden Posse.

Planting our first bed with bluebonnets, sedums, and other succulents.

Travis throwing dust in the air with his rabid shoveling.

A highlight of the dig was watching a vintage firetruck being towed from Roadhouse Relics. You never know what wonders you might see at a Garden Posse dig, really.

Nor do you know what kinds of amazingly generous and helpful people you may meet. This is the second night, when we discovered our garden frame had disappeared.

Here at the workshop near Happiness, Vic and Ryan swiftly measure and cut our three-armed frame.

Emily says, "Look, I'm helping!" Mostly we stood back and were impressed with our own good fortune.

The biggest challenge? Tying this awkward thing on to the car.

And then my camera battery died. But the Posse lived on.

So there you have it, folks! The pictures I promised to post weeks ago. We are likely going to move across the street to fix up the lesser known Cesar Chavez and sunflower mural. Details upcoming tomorrow.

Adventures in late night gardening

I'd like to say up front that I apologize for not being a more wonderful blogger. The truth is I (Lindsay) have been experiencing some computer problems (hard drive death, considering throwing it off a second-story balcony). Blogger has been acting weird on my other computer. And now my camera battery is also dead, and I can't find the charger. It's one of those weeks, right? So I won't be able to show you photos of our magnificent Garden Posse adventures until the digital gods resume smiling on me. 

Fortunately, the garden gods have been just beaming at the Posse. Well, kind of. So two weeks ago, we dug into the hard, compacted soil underneath the "Greetings from Austin" mural, with the blessings  of the property owner. Who was moving his vintage fire department truck at the time. It was neat. Anyhow, we planted a thin strip of sedums and bluebonnets, along with a ghost plant and a jade plant donated by a neighbor, on the right side of the mural. On the other side, our diggers were not having so much success. We decided it would be best, and look better, to build a raised garden bed with a wooden frame. 

Travis, bored over the weekend, built us a frame. But he wasn't going to be able to make it on Tuesday, so he dropped it off beforehand. When the Posse arrived at 7:30pm, the frame was nowhere to be seen. Who steals a garden frame? Seriously. We were puzzled, and not a little disappointed in humanity. Everyone else in the area seemed so nice. Without a garden frame, our plans were in a bit of a bind. 

So I ran off to GAGA, a few blocks up, thinking that even if they didn't have extra wood, they might have an even more creative solution. Unfortunately, it was closed. Across the street is Happiness, an adorable succulent and gift shop. I thought as gardeners, they might be sympathetic. They were all sitting around a table, drinking beer when I ran in and explained myself. One guy said, "Sure, we got a pile of donated wood," and I was whisked back to some workshop area where Vic and Ryan decided they would just build us a brand new frame to order. "Bada-bing, bada-boom!" is how Vic described it. He had some colorful expressions. 

We measured the bed and returned to the workshop. In less than 10 minutes, we had a brand new, very sturdy garden frame. The comical part was when we had to tie the frame to the top of my station wagon, and drive back to the mural with hazard lights on. And after that, everything went as planned. We filled the frame with rich soil and  compost, and planted a ton of plants. And it looks great. 

The Garden Posse had triumphed over adversity. We were extremely lucky to have found such generous and able people to help us out. Guerrilla gardening is like that - people take and people give. And it always seems like the people giving are giving so much more than what is taken. It gives you an optimistic feeling about humanity.

There's still a bit more work in our plan for the mural - it involves a truckload of free mulch. But next week we'll be relaxing from this week's adventures. We'll be meeting at 7:30 pm at Salvation Pizza for the pizza and beer. And checking out the 34th street garden, maybe doing some weeding or replanting. We hope you come hang out.

And thanks to Chaz for stopping by to say hi and drop off plants on Tuesday! Hi!

Raised bed at Greetings from Austin!